My thoughts, and opinions on many subjects. But it's always a mad world.

Updating Tuesdays, and Saturdays, with a video blog the last Thursday of each month (Most of the time anyway). On Sunday I roll over, and go back to sleep.

So Who is Amanda Harper?

Well to start with I'm obviously a writer, though of everything from very alternative romances to crime dramas.

I'm a lesbian, trans-woman in her 30's, who is very much into her royal blue hair (now purple), velvet and leather filled wardrobe and of course my oversized shit kicking goth boots. Oh, and I'm a hardcore PC, and tabletop gamer.

In this blog I want to hit on subjects that I don't have another medium for. Expect reviews of games old and new, though mostly old. Expect rants about the world in general. Expect the occasional lapse into convoluted personal philosophy. Oh and definitely expect some stuff on BDSM, after all I was a professional dominatrix for a few years and enjoy the BDSM lifestyle in my private life now.

So I hope you enjoy the randomness of my ruminations, and let the madness commence.

(Please feel absolutely welcome to comment on any and all of my posts. I have only three rules...
1: avoid Godwins rule.
2: avoid bad language.
3: I'm not here to provide free advertising to commercial websites, comment if you wish but I will edit out links post to such sites.
Other than that enjoy yourself, and please feel free to have a pretty signature.)

Tango’ed an Irish affliction.

A walk down Dublin’s historic Grafton Street, is almost always a pleasurable affair. With shops on either side filled to capacity with gorgeous things to wear and restaurants filled to bursting point with delicious delicacies to eat, what could be better? Well as you saunter down the street, why not increase your enjoyment by counting the number of Irish men and women you see, who’ve been Tango’ed?

Like many of my fellow Irish citizens, I am a member of a mongrel breed. Ireland has been invaded so many times, that there can be very few, if any, of us who don’t have a good dollop of invader blood in there somewhere. Though all of our invaders have been of the northern, pale skinned variety. Add that to the historical tendency of Irishmen to join foreign armies, you know for a good ole paid bust up, and there’s bound to be a goodly portion of Portuguese, Spanish, French, Indian and the Gods only know what in a fair few of us.

The end result of all this genetic diversity, through some form of genetic pinball means that we have not ended up with swarthy good-looks. No, in fact the average Irish person has skin that goes from “so pale as to be see-through” to “oh my that looks like a delicious lobster” in about the same amount of time as it took you to read this sentence.

But there are still so many people who will insist on looking like they were born on the Costa Del Somewhere Sunny. Hence this golden age for those “lucky” women who with their spray guns, get the unequaled pleasure of spraying brownish chemicals onto the nations cellulite riddled, pasty flesh. Lucky girls. Now I am not saying that every Irish person with a fake tan looks like the bastard child of an Oompa-Loompa and a satsuma. There are a lucky few who actually manage to look well while wearing a layer of Bovril colored paint on their skins. But they are vastly outnumbered by those, poor unfortunates, who seem to be of the opinion that marigold orange is a natural skin tone for human beings.

Here’s how you play. Walk through your local town, be it Dublin, Cork…anywhere at all that is inhabited by a human variety of the bipedal chocolate orange. As you saunter down the street you watch out for an example of each of the following:

Man in well-tailored suit with skin tone you could toast bread off of.

Woman in well-tailored dress or skirt-suit with skin tone you could warm your hands off of.

Man or woman in a shell suit, which is on the verge of melting from their skin tone.

Teenager of either gender who looks like they’ve been dipped in the toxic waste produced by Willy Wonka’s factory.

Young boy or girl in Communion or confirmation outfit, who has an oddly coloured tan, which ends abruptly at their wrists leaving their hands a pristine porcelain white.

The first member of your shopping party to point out all four examples (which must be verifiably Irish, I leave how you determine this to yourselves to figure out) shouts out, “Tango’ed!” and wins a free lunch paid for by their friends.

Of course eventually the days of this particular game will be over. Someday Irishmen and women will accept, that we do not come from the Mediterranean region. But instead come from a cold island in the Atlantic, where direct sunlight is measured in nanoseconds per year. We will all learn to accept, that our pasty natural skin tone can be just as attractive as a tan, fake or natural. After all there must be some reason why invaders always rape our priests and murder our women…hmmm I may have got that wrong somehow.

But for now I say let us enjoy a good wholesome game of Irish Tango Bingo, while we enjoy the cooling spray of the traditional Irish summer monsoon.

5 Comments to “Tango’ed an Irish affliction.”

First of all- oh my god, you got me THIS close to a tragic meeting of tea and keyboard. THIS close.

Secondly, though, I’m a little more optimistic than you. I think that future generations will glorify and thank the recent influx of newly-minted Irish people whose parents showed up from places that do get more than six minutes of sunshine per year. Give it a few generations and their gift of non-translucent genes might very well have percolated through our (reasonably shallow, you’ll admit) gene pool.
In the meantime, however, I’m sure the phlebotomists of the country are more than happy with the currently overwhelmingly transparently-pale situation.

Also, I would like to propose a game of Long Island Iced Tango Bingo, featuring ourselves and whatever delightful degenerates we can scrounge up, to be held as soon as all are free and well enough to be carried onto a barstool and fed sips of cocktails by scantily clad young Nubilians*?

Now more importantly, tomorrow week and we shall partake of much Flounge-age and viewing of those soft squichies who come from the planet Nubile. I’ll leave it to you to contact our favourite Siberian.